San Francisco Mountain Lion Caught in the Outer Sunset

The lion picked a crawl space. On the morning of Friday, September 18, a young male mountain lion wedged himself under a house on 44th Avenue, on the block between Ulloa and Vicente streets, a few blocks up from the San Francisco Zoo, while police on bullhorns sent neighbors back inside. Animal Care and Control darted him. He bolted into the bushes. A second dart about half an hour later ended it.

By afternoon he wore a GPS collar and was back in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A mountain lion in San Francisco is still rare, and nobody was hurt. But it was the second sighting in two weeks, which makes it fair to ask what living on the city's wild edge involves.

How does a mountain lion end up on 44th Avenue?

It walks there, almost always as a young male looking for a home range of his own. Male lions leave their mothers around age two and can roam across 200 square miles looking for territory, according to Bay Area Puma Project founder Zara McDonald.

The Santa Cruz Mountains are boxed in by freeways and housing on every side. Chris Wilmers, who leads the UC Santa Cruz Santa Cruz Puma Project, said after the January capture that dispersing males wander and end up in places like San Francisco. The northbound ones tend to come up along the coast from the hills south of the city.

Nobody tracked 187M's exact route, so treat this as the likely path, not a documented one: up the Peninsula through the Crystal Springs watershed and Sweeney Ridge, past San Bruno Mountain and the Daly City bluffs, into Fort Funston, Lake Merced and the brush around the Zoo. From there, 44th and Ulloa is a short trot north.

San Francisco's mountain lion history is short, and it keeps ending the same way

Here is the baseline. In July 2015 the Presidio Trust logged sightings in Sea Cliff, the western Presidio and near Lake Merced. On November 10, 2017, a female was tranquilized near Diamond Boulevard and Duncan Street in Diamond Heights. In May 2021 a collared lion walked through Bernal Heights and left on its own.

Then 2026 happened. In January, 157M, a young male the Puma Project had collared as a kitten, was captured in Pacific Heights. The Panhandle cat slipped away overnight. And now 187M, whom the project collared and released the same day.

So roughly one episode every couple of years, then three in nine months. That is a real uptick, and it fits a boxed-in population pushing young males outward. Every one ended with the cat leaving or being moved, and none hurt a person.

The law shapes that outcome too. Mountain lions have been a specially protected mammal since Proposition 117 in 1990, and on February 12, 2026, the Fish and Game Commission voted to list the Central Coast and Southern California population as threatened under the state Endangered Species Act. That population includes the Santa Cruz Mountains. Dart, collar and release is the default for a reason.

The San Francisco neighborhoods on the wild edge

Nine San Francisco neighborhoods back onto the big, brushy open space a wandering lion or a resident coyote uses, and they are not all pricey. Here they are on our amenities score, which folds in parks, and current median price.

Outer Sunset, the fog-belt grid of stucco row houses running from Golden Gate Park south to roughly Taraval, scores 3.9 for amenities and 4.2 overall. Its median of about $1.73 million in August 2026 sits roughly 21 percent under the city. The capture block itself falls south of Taraval, in what realtor maps generally call Outer Parkside, where the median was about $1.74 million in July 2026.

The honest trade-off: Outer Parkside ranks 91st of 92 San Francisco neighborhoods for sunshine on our climate data. The ocean edge is cheaper partly because it is gray. Lake Shore, on Lake Merced, costs more ($2.22 million in August) with the list's lowest amenities score, 2.8. Diamond Heights and Presidio Heights medians swing hard on a handful of sales, so read those two as rough.

If you see one

Stand your ground and look big. That is the core of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife guidance:

• Do not run, and do not turn your back.
• Pick up small children right away. Keep dogs leashed and close.
• Face the lion, raise your arms, and make noise. Do not crouch or bend over.
• Never approach it, and leave it an escape route.
• Call San Francisco Animal Care and Control at 415-554-9400, or 911 if someone is in danger.
• If it ever attacks, fight back. Do not play dead.

For scale, CDFW counts fewer than 50 verified attacks on people in California since 1890, six of them fatal, and says you are a thousand times more likely to be struck by lightning.

Coyotes are the wild neighbor you will actually meet

If you have a cat or a small dog near these parks, plan around coyotes, not lions. San Francisco Animal Care and Control has estimated about 100 coyotes in the city, back since about 2002, with more than half of reported sightings in Golden Gate Park. In one sample, 35 percent of coyotes tested had eaten cats.

The fixes are boring and they work. Cats indoors. Dogs leashed in Golden Gate Park, Glen Canyon and McLaren, especially at dawn and dusk. If a coyote gets bold, yell and wave until it moves off.

How to think about the wild edge before you buy

Treat wildlife like fog: a real feature of the address, not a dealbreaker. The same brush that hid 187M for a morning is why Glen Canyon feels like a canyon.

On a tour, check whether the back fence opens onto a greenbelt and whether dense ivy crowds the deck. CDFW suggests clearing thick vegetation near the house and adding outdoor lighting.

The bigger fix is regional. A 2023 wildlife undercrossing on Highway 17 cut collisions there to zero, and connected habitat gives young males somewhere to go besides a crawl space in the Sunset. For the other big Outer Sunset question, see our look at Prop G and the Great Highway. To weigh open space against everything else, our San Francisco amenities ranking and the full San Francisco neighborhood rankings are the place to start.

Sources

ABC7 San Francisco, “Mountain lion captured in dramatic standoff after roaming San Francisco's Outer Sunset neighborhood,” September 18, 2026

KTVU FOX 2, “Mountain lion tranquilized, captured in SF's Outer Sunset,” September 18, 2026

NBC Bay Area, “Young mountain lion captured in San Francisco's Outer Sunset,” September 18, 2026

CBS San Francisco, “Video shows mountain lion in San Francisco's Outer Sunset District bolting away before being captured,” September 18, 2026

Local News Matters, “'Exploring' mountain lion captured in San Francisco's Outer Sunset, released into wild,” September 18, 2026

San Francisco Chronicle, “San Francisco mountain lion captured in Sunset, released back into wild,” September 2026

The San Francisco Standard, Outer Sunset capture (September 18, 2026), Panhandle sighting (September 6, 2026) and Santa Cruz Puma Project follow-up (September 22, 2026)

ABC7 San Francisco, 157M Pacific Heights capture, January 2026, and Smithsonian Magazine and Lookout Santa Cruz coverage of the same capture

Presidio Trust, “Mountain Lion Sightings Reported in San Francisco and the Presidio,” July 7, 2015

Hoodline, Diamond Heights mountain lion capture, November 2017, and NBC Bay Area, Bernal Heights sighting, May 2021

California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Fish and Game Commission CESA decision, February 2026, and Mountain Lions human-wildlife conflict guidance

Allen Matkins, “Mountain Lion Listed as Threatened Species in Central and Southern California,” 2026

Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon, “Learning to Coexist With at Least 100 Coyotes in San Francisco,” February 3, 2023

Houseberry, San Francisco city guide, neighborhood pages and rankings, retrieved September 22, 2026